1) The Inconvenient Contest

Once upon a time, the King of the Sky Snails was boasting to the King of the Sea Slugs about all of the interesting and strange animal noises that sky snails knew how to make. The King of the Sea Slugs was convinced that sea slugs could make even more interesting and strange animal noises than the sky snails. So the two kings agreed to have a contest.

The snail king had all of the sky snails gather over the sea, and the slug king had all of the sea slugs gather together near the surface of the water, and at a signal given by an excited chipmunk, everybody started making all of the strange and interesting animal noises that they could think of. And everybody could think of a lot of them. The contest was expected to take just a few minutes, but it took hours. Then days. By the time that it had been two weeks, the sky snails and sea slugs were still busy with their contest.

Everybody who wasn't a sea slug or sky snail was very interested in the contest at first, but by and by, it had become quite inconvenient to most of the creatures. Except for the chipmunk who had started off the contest, who realized that there was now a very good snail shell path across the sea and went to visit a relative who lived on a nearby island.

However, for the sea-dwellers, the large group of sea slugs made the ocean close to the surface very crowded. The whales found this to be particularly upsetting, if they happened to try to come up to the surface where the sea slugs were.

The land-dwellers were sad about the absence of the usually-cheerful sky snails. Since they were now only in the air just above the sea, they were no longer leaving their sunset-colored snail trails all over the sky. By this time the beautiful trails had mostly either faded away or been eaten by the Trail-eating Tanagers. It was also hard for other creatures to remember that there weren’t any sky snails around to help them reach things on their highest shelves.

So, a group of the land-dwellers soon decided that they must do something. They realized that they would need to work closely with some sea-dwellers. They sent some penguins to talk to the sea cucumbers, as they felt that the sea cucumbers would be the most reliable in the situation. The sea cucumbers gladly agreed to do their part.

At the agreed-on time on the first day of the third week, two groups of creatures (one on land and one in the sea) were gathered close to the Inconvenient Contest, but just out of sight of the slugs and snails. The sea cucumbers had done their work well and had found some very trust-worthy sea creatures to help them. Everybody waited for the signal. A baby whale rose slowly to the surface and spouted water as high as it could. It was time.

As soon as the signal was given, the land creatures quickly ran from one snail shell to another until they reached the King of the Sky Snails, and the sea creatures swam towards the King of the Sea Slugs. The two monarchs were facing each other, making sheep noises at each other. Acting quickly, a monkey captured the snail king, and at the same time an octopus captured the slug king. The monkey and the octopus hurried to the quiet bay where they had arranged to meet, and everybody else (except for the rest of the snails and slugs, who were too surprised to act quickly) came with them.

The snails and slugs looked blankly at each other for several minutes. Finally a sky snail said to a nearby sea slug, “I suppose we should follow them and save our kings, shouldn’t we?” to which the slug replied, “Yes, that would be a good idea.”

So, quite forgetting that they hadn’t finished their contest, the snails and slugs went off towards the bay.

When they got there, the wisest of the sea cucumbers came to the surface and advised the snails and slugs to set one day each year to have their animal noise contest, and gave them several ideas of how to run the contest in the future so that they would be able to keep it to one day’s time. The sky snails and sea slugs thought that it was very good advice. Now that they thought of it, they were all very tired and would be glad for the contest to be over.

The next day, the whales were absolutely delighted that there was not a single sea slug in the way when they came to the surface. And the land inhabitants were cheered by the familiar sight of sky snails wandering slowly across the sky, leaving their beautiful slimy trails behind them.

And the chipmunk, who had planned to return home that day from his visit to his relative’s island, was disappointed to have to take a ship.

And the next year, all of the local sea creatures and land creatures were very excited for the slug and snail animal noise contest. It was a great success, and it became a much-loved tradition.